


Columbia

by CourtneyCourtney



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 10:11:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3377630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourtneyCourtney/pseuds/CourtneyCourtney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edwin Jarvis learns to navigate in the wake of Steve Rogers.</p>
<p>(Slight spoilers for episodes 1.06 and 1.07)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Columbia

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever cry because you love Peggy Carter so much? I just read spoilers for 1.07 and I want to die.
> 
> I think it’s interesting that in my mind Jarvis is now entrenched in the Captain America MCU mythos and he never so much as crossed paths with the man. (Probably.)
> 
> Slight spoilers for episodes 1.06 and 1.07 (really vague in regards to the latter)

 

_Columbia_ : a historical and poetic name used for the United States of America and also as one of the names of its female personification

 

The first time Edwin Jarvis sees Captain America is on the back page of a newspaper Anna is reading. It’s a drawing, and the surrounding text is in Hungarian; Jarvis assumes it’s from a movie or cartoon before Anna assures him that, no, it’s a real human being. America made its own perfect, blonde-haired, blue-eyed superman to beat Hitler.

Jarvis smiles and shakes his head, because of course they did. It’s a moment he holds onto, a sliver of amusement shared with Anna while everything else in their lives looked grim. They may have had more pressing matters to attend to, but at least there was a Captain America out there fighting the good fight.

*******

Perhaps it would be cliché to say he doesn’t regret anything, too broad a statement ( _if he could have avoided being caught, if he could have forged more letters of transit…_ ).

It would be the truth, though. People are always worth the risk, especially the good ones. People are always worth saving, regardless of laws and paperwork.

*******

Captain America is inescapable in the States. Even years after the war, even years after his disappearance, Captain Roger’s presence is pervasive. His smiling face graces propaganda posters, now a permanent fixture of New York City’s landscape. His exploits can be re-read in the comics, reenacted with plastic figures, re-viewed on the stage and screen.

It’s lucky he isn’t the type to hum or whistle, Jarvis thinks. “Star-Spangled Man with a Plan” still gets stuck in his head entirely too often.

*******

Howard doesn’t talk about Steve. The topic seems to be off-limits with everyone – the few reporters Howard will answer to, the many women he takes out on the town – and Jarvis isn’t one to pry. Captain Rogers was not part of the foundation their relationship was built on, not a mutual acquaintance. Jarvis wonders sometimes if that makes it easier for Howard to relax around him and Anna.

It’s odd, the way Captain Rogers is everywhere in popular culture, but the one place Jarvis expected to hear him talked about most is a void ( _avoided_ , his mind replies). He works for and practically lives with one of the men who spearheaded Project Rebirth, yet its greatest success goes unmentioned.

(Jarvis wonders what type of questions Howard had to answer before he arrived, how many questions it took for him to snap.)

 

Howard doesn’t talk about Steve, until one night, he does.

Jarvis has lost track of all they've had to drink, Anna long gone off to bed. They’ve found the bottom of another bottle of scotch, and they’ve found themselves circling around talking about the war (because that’s what it always comes back to, where their relationship started and where their conversations always seem to stop). Jarvis doesn’t want to talk about treason, wants to ignore his own side of the story for once, and so he asks, simple as that. He asks Howard what Captain America was truly like before he can regret it, and then he does regret it. (They’re close, Howard and him, and they’re friendly but sometimes Jarvis isn’t sure they’re what you would call friends.)

He expects Howard to shut down, to tell him off.  Jarvis wouldn't blame him.  Instead, Howard swirls his tumbler, staring down into the remaining ice and smiles.  It's a distant smile laced with far too much sadness, but it _is_ a smile.

Howard doesn't seem to remember it the next morning, their hours-long conversation, the way he told Jarvis Steve's story from start to finish, first meeting to final words.  But it happens again the following week, and again without Jarvis's prodding.  It happens gradually (as most healing does), and it isn't long at all before Howard is mentioning Captain Rogers in sober, daytime conversations, dropping in a casual _that reminds me of when Steve used to_ or _did I ever tell you about the time Steve did..._ Jarvis nods and listens, silently encouraging him.

*******

Some people, Jarvis thinks, were not as eager as he was to end the war. He sees it in the way Miss Carter rushes into a fight, looking for blood and broken bones as if she can reclaim the feeling of being in the field and not stuck behind a desk and a telephone and a list of lunch orders. He sees it in the way Howard throws himself into romance after romance (and that’s _hardly_ the right word but Jarvis could never call the man who saved his life anything tawdry) and invention after invention like he has yet to find the right distraction.

Perhaps Peggy's style has always been this animalistic. Perhaps Howard has always entertained this many paramours.

(More likely is that Jarvis has no idea what they were like before Captain Rogers left the picture, before the end of the war stripped them of purpose.)

*******

It’s difficult sometimes for Jarvis to remember Captain Rogers was a man before he was propaganda.

The headlines make him out to be larger than life, a mystery for the ages even though the papers are being sold on the street Steve grew up on. The radio shows are bombastic, even the personal information about how _Rogers was born on a hot July day in 1918 to Sarah and Joseph etcetera etcetera_ seeming full of hot air.  The files Howard has on him are too clinical. Jarvis could research Captain Rogers's height and weight and blood type until he had them memorizd, but those pieces would not add up to a person.

Peggy is the first one to make Captain America seem human. Jarvis reads between the lines; her reminiscing is equally flattering but somehow less reverent than Howard’s memories. Peggy Carter remembers Steve as an equal.

He was a man first. Steve Rogers was a man, and he grew up in Brooklyn. He fought in back alleys with nothing but his fists and he had people who loved him before he was tall and powerful. (Peggy loved him before he was tall and powerful, and Jarvis will never forget that, regardless of whatever rumors he hears.) Steve was always pure of heart and ready to do the right thing even when he didn’t have the strength to back it up. Even before he was a household name, there was a Captain America out there fighting the good fight.

*******

The conspiracy theories are always swirling around the city. Captain America survived the plane crash and is now living incognito in Denver! Captain America died several months _before_ his disappearance and the plane crash was staged! Captain America was several men acting as one and the rest gave up the charade after one of them died!

Jarvis never believes they’re anything more than falsehood, but he still finds them amusing until he notices the way Howard’s liquor cabinet gets emptier faster, the way Peggy breaks a drinking glass at the automat when a couple at the counter starts trading tall tales.

It was easier before, to bite his tongue and keep his thoughts to himself. All too suddenly he finds himself irritated at the merest mention of Captain America being anything less than authentic.

He could just as easily stop the gossip as he could stop the sun from rising.

As for the radio show, well, he and Anna can find something else to listen to on Tuesday nights.

*******

It’s a disadvantage, not knowing Steve like Peggy and Howard did, particularly when they’re fighting over who cared about him more.

(He deserves better, Jarvis thinks, than one vial of blood as his physical legacy.)

*******

Anna believed the greatest couples were the ones who always strove to be the best version of themselves because of their partners. Their ideals were reflected and made brighter. Their virtues were practically doubled.

Jarvis can only infer from what he sees at present and what Howard tells him about the past, but he pieces together the important bits. During the war Captain Rogers looked to Peggy for guidance. Now, after the war, Peggy looks to the memory of Steve for guidance. Individually, they were strong, they were brave, but together they were best.

As far as Jarvis is concerned, that makes Peggy as much Captain America as Steve was (perhaps more so since she has to carry the shield alone now). Peggy Carter came back to a country that does not accept her entirely to help other people, to keep the land of the free and the home of the brave as free and brave as possible.

If Captain Rogers was half as magnetic, half as altruistic as Miss Carter is, Jarvis understands completely why so many people followed him, why so many still eulogize him.

*******

One month ago it would have been absurd. Agent Carter is yelling at him in the alley behind the automat over a co-worker she has knocked unconscious with his own gun. She’s insisting they split up, insisting he let her retrieve a vial of Captain Rogers’s blood from her apartment.

And Jarvis understands.  This is Important. This is not something he will argue against.

He worries, of course. Night falls, and Peggy doesn’t make it to their rendezvous point, and Jarvis worries. He should have protested more, knowing she was on a course for collision, just like Steve before her. Both too reckless to consider the consequences…

Jarvis frowns. It feels like a lifetime ago, the forged signature on a stolen letter, but _reckless_. It doesn’t run as close to surface as it does with Peggy, but it _is_ something he understands.

He owes her this - for getting him out of his interrogation, for taking the metaphorical bullet with his name on it - and if now is not the time for action, then the proper time will never come.

(Still, Jarvis braces himself. After all, he’s no star-spangled man, and he certainly doesn’t have a plan.)


End file.
